In 2015 Facebook downplayed Cambridge Analytica risks, documents reveal
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Internal Facebook correspondence from September 2015, released as part of a US government lawsuit on Friday, reveals new details about Facebook’s early knowledge of potentially improper data collection by Cambridge Analytica, The Guardian reports.
The existence of the internal discussion was first reported by the Guardian in March 2019. That report marked Facebook’s first acknowledgement that some of its employees were aware of concerns about improper data practices by Cambridge Analytica four months before the Guardian’s 11 December 2015 article exposed them.
Facebook’s lack of candor about this earlier knowledge to both investors and the press was one of the subjects of a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) complaint that Facebook settled by paying a $100m fine in July. Facebook did not admit or deny the SEC’s allegations as part of its settlement.
But the correspondence – which the Washington DC attorney general’s office fought for months to unseal as part of its lawsuit – provides new insight into how Facebook staff reacted, or did not react, to concerns about the use of user data by political campaign consultants.
